


The Rain Curtain

by EirianErisdar



Series: The Jedi Who Endured [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alderaan, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coruscant, Episode: s02e05 Landing at Point Rain, F/M, Gen, Geonosis, Hurt/Comfort, Ilum, In which the Force to Obi-Wan is like rain, Kamino, Mandalore, Naboo - Freeform, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Obi-Wan's lifetime in ten snapshots of rain, Tatooine, landing at point rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27543154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EirianErisdar/pseuds/EirianErisdar
Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi who endured. Born in those last years of peace, grown in the winter of the Republic, and passing on in the waning years of the Empire. The life of Obi-Wan Kenobi, from initiate to master to the Force; from Coruscant to Ilum, Mandalore to Geonosis, and Tatooine and beyond, told in the story of ten rainfalls.Originally posted to FFN in 2016, cross-posted to AO3 in its entirety on November 13 2020.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze, Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: The Jedi Who Endured [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2016758
Comments: 15
Kudos: 60





	1. Rain on Coruscant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [Alto's Adventure: Zen Mode](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRbuvUG7oQs&list=PLBl_4bDlHEJt9FNRC4CTPAztbD0IaaKzf&index=1)

The first time Obi-Wan Kenobi experiences rain, he is alone.

It is one of those rare trips out of the cloister of the Temple, and Obi-Wan had wandered away from the other initiates, Force-signature drawn tight around him in defense against the sheer presence of one of Coruscant's busiest markets – and also quite conveniently shielding his escape from the awareness of the clan-masters. He gravitates towards the crowds at the plaza's centre, drawn inexplicably by the syncopated harmony of a hundred different languages spoken on the same small stretch of duracrete. The musical chatter calls to him, whispers into the Force of worlds days away by hyperspace but eons beyond in real-time; of squalor and riches, of starlight and shadow, of knights and masters.

Obi-Wan stands and tilts his head back, reveling in the closest thing to the music of the spheres that can be heard here, on Coruscant's surface.

And so when the first heavy droplet hits his face, Obi-Wan snaps open his eyes in surprise and catches the next raindrop square in the eye.

He blinks reflexively, the clear liquid flicking over his cerulean iris like the unexpected chill of a stormfront over sea; fresh and wholly unbreathed, and yet icy with the coming gale.

The pale, translucent grey of Coruscant's skies seems to stir, thickening and congealing from smoke to slate. Even as Obi-Wan gapes upwards, the pitter-patter of stray raindrops skips and crescendos into a laughing chorus of syncopated beats.

Unbidden, the Force swells in sympathy with the clouds above, and suddenly the sheeting rain turns to hammered needles of gold. A strange double-vision layers itself over the grey wetness of rain on duracrete, and Obi-Wan feels each raindrop on his upturned hands like a shudder of time shattering against hyperspace.

When Obi-Wan finally manages to make himself look away from the sky, he finds himself quite alone.

It would seem that he in his enraptured wonder had completely missed the clearing of the square. Where there were crowded stalls minutes before now stands nothing but discarded awnings and scattered plastifilm boxes. The sudden solitude does not perturb Obi-Wan; he is wrapped securely in the Force, and though the moisture soaks him to his bones, it brings the Living Force with it, suffusing him with lightning and life.

He reaches up towards the sky and lowers his shields in one glorious laugh. The storm seems to crash through him with new strength, and he is everything; he is the icicles melting into rain as it falls down through the atmosphere kilometers above, he is the bounce of droplets off the pitted duracrete, and he is the trickle of moisture that seeps its way between the paving stones and down Coruscant's hungry pores, down to the lower levels and their forests of neon lights–

A hand clamps down on his shoulder, and Obi-Wan snaps back into himself so rapidly that the recoil stings his soul.

He looks up into the irate face of the Jedi clanmaster and grins so broadly he thinks he might burst.

The clanmaster's face twitches.

The rainfall stops, but even as Obi-Wan is towed away back to the Temple by one stinging ear, he remembers the beautiful syncopation of raindrops on his skin, and the bright voice of the Force singing with every single one.


	2. Blizzard on Ilum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [Dear Theodosia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owtt-Gtgueg&list=PLBl_4bDlHEJt9FNRC4CTPAztbD0IaaKzf&index=2%22)

Ilum decides to welcome Obi-Wan's newly found lightsaber crystal to the surface with a hailstorm.

As though the planet regrets this decision and wishes to offer an olive branch as compensation, the storm is polite enough not to catch up with master and apprentice until they are almost to their ship.

Almost.

The ship is still a half-klick away when Qui-Gon suddenly tugs his panting apprentice to the side, half carrying the exhausted thirteen-year-old to the short bluff of ice sticking out of the otherwise flat ice-plains.

A harlequin fang flashes into existence as the Jedi master palms his lightsaber and carves a narrow opening into the ice, forming a small recess under a ragged, dripping overhang. Obi-Wan is bundled into the tiny alcove, the tall, lanky form of his master somehow folding into the limited space next to him.

Qui-Gon throws one wide cloak sleeve over his apprentice, tucking him under his elbow as a mother convor would cover her offspring with a wing.

The weather front hits like a wall of writhing spears; questing fingers of sleet and ice twist in front of their faces, invading the small hollow with frozen touches.

Tucked into the dark cocoon between his master's arm and side, Obi-Wan senses Qui-Gon breathe out, once. The Force tingles in response, and warms the air around them.

Obi-Wan shifts a bit and sticks his face out of a gap in the fabric, hair squashed into a russet mess. His short braid sticks straight out from behind one ear, like a tiny nub.

The corner of Qui-Gon's mouth twitches upwards. He reaches down and flicks the red-brown stub. "Stay awake, young one. It wouldn't do to fall asleep in these temperatures."

Obi-Wan dips his chin. "Yes, Master."

The white curtain of Ilum's breath billows in their faces, lining Qui-Gon's beard with ice-crystals and weaving silver threads into Obi-Wan's braid. The planet seems capricious in its moods, each inhale and exhale the lightest stir of snowflakes or the roar of sleet against pitted stone and ice. But throughout it all, the wind whispers the same word, over and over, like a slyly subtle Force-suggestion:

Sleep…

Obi-Wan snaps awake to a burning sensation on his cheekbone. For one bizarre moment he wonders if he has been struck; but the sharp sting gradually subsides into an ache, and then a gentle heat as a broad hand warms Obi-Wan's cheek.

Oh. It is not a strike, after all; only a concerned touch.

His brain seems strangely addled. Obi-Wan frowns up at the older Jedi and wonders what to call him. There is a word often used, beginning with Mern; but there is also another, one that rhymes with the previous epithet, the first letter of which is Forn.

Obi-Wan wrestles with the impossibly difficult question for the longest while, only to realise that the cold has crawled into his bones, wrapping traitorous tentacles around his mind.

And so, just as he could not differentiate ice from warmth a moment ago, he cannot remember what title to call…

The heavy weight across his shoulders suddenly shifts, and he is yanked into a circle of rough cream tunic and russet fabric. A calloused hand cups the back of his head and his face – his numb, nerveless face – is pressed into a warm tabard.

The Force murmurs agitatedly, and the heat suddenly intensifies. Obi-Wan struggles as the Force-summoned warmth burns new blood into his extremities in one agonising wave.

He blinks, eyelashes dripping melted ice crystals, and remembers.

"Ow," he comments.

A rumbling chuckle, reverberating through the homespun linen under his cheek. He glances up, wincing as his neck protests.

"Articulate as always." Qui-Gon's eyes are filled with amusement and…relief?

Obi-Wan stares. He cannot quite shake the feeling that he has missed something.

And then he feels the warm patch on top of his head shift – and then it dawns on him with growing mortification that the warm patch is in fact a palm, the weight across his back an arm, and the ridge that he rests his chin on a collarbone. And he is warm.

Qui-Gon Jinn is embracing him as though he were a child.

Obi-Wan's cheeks flush with embarrassment.

His master raises an eyebrow. "I warned you not to sleep, padawan."

"Y-y-yesss M-m-m–" The cold has solidified Obi-Wan's mouth. He tries to frown, but that too fails.

"Quiet."

"Y-y-ye–"

Qui-Gon's laugh is a low, rumbling echo in the tiny space. "I understand, little one. Now be still, and wait a little longer. The storm has almost passed."

Obi-Wan drops his head back onto his master's tabards. The older Jedi's fingers card through his hair, flicking aside spikes of frost.

Qui-Gon is silent for a moment, and when he speaks again, his voice is pitched softer in memory. "I do not know if you recall, Obi-Wan, but there was an incident ten years ago, midwinter, in one of the Temple gardens…"

The words drop into the song of the Force as Obi-Wan listens, and learns, and remembers.

The storm wears itself out after an indeterminate time, leaving the planet's surface freshly adorned with feathers of silver and white. The Jedi emerge from their small hollow, shake the ice off their cloaks, and continue their journey towards their ship, and the stars, and then home.

Ilum's breath walls up the little alcove in the ice with snow, as though to keep it untouched for eternity.


	3. Funeral Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [The Longest Walk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0xecQbjhdc&list=PLBl_4bDlHEJt9FNRC4CTPAztbD0IaaKzf&index=3)

The sky above the Jedi Temple weeps tears of loss and welcome when they bring her body home.

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan descend the ramp of the gleaming consular ship together, and pause on the last pristine rut, heads tilting back in unison to stare at the sobbing sky.

Mace Windu and Bant Eerin move past the two Jedi and head for the archway under which Yoda and the assembled Council wait. Both have their cowls drawn up, and Mace's strong hand is on her shoulder, guiding her pace. Although Bant's coral-coloured skin cannot be seen, something in the manner of her rain-soaked steps suggests defeat.

The clouds sag lower overhead, and the shower grows heavier, as though the sky trembles under its own weight. Mace, Bant, and the archway are soon swallowed up by the grey sheets of rain, giving the illusion that the ship sits alone on the edge of the landing pad, with a bridge heading into nothingness stretching before it.

By unspoken agreement, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan linger on the edge of the ramp for a moment longer.

Water splashes and pools on landing platform a scant pace ahead. Behind the two Jedi, Tahl rests forever still on a hover-bed, her body wreathed with hundreds of full-bloomed New Apsolon flowers. Their perfume rises anew in the humid air, a ghostly memory of blossoms in the field – beautiful, vibrant, and cut down before their time.

Neither master or apprentice move. There is nothing save for the moaning of the wind and the fevered drumming of rain on steel. The Force hums under their feet and at their fingertips, subdued.

Obi-Wan is the first to break the spell by glancing at his master.

Qui-Gon stands tall, back straight, shoulders thrown back. His hands are clasped behind him. He would look like a soldier standing at rest at a court martial, were it not for the telltale signs only obvious to those who know him best.

The only Jedi to fall under that category stands beside him. The other seems to sleep behind, but that lovely form is only a shell; _she_ is gone, dissipated into the Force.

Obi-Wan knows Qui-Gon's broad hands, often so steady on a lightsaber hilt, are clasped behind his back to hide their shaking. He also knows too well the pulse throbbing at the edge of Qui-Gon's jaw, that traitorous rhythm of a heart that feels dead, but is somehow still beating. And his eyes…his eyes are as glassy as the polished, water-slicked duracrete at his boots.

"Master."

Qui-Gon does not turn his head, or indeed move at all.

Obi-Wan tries again. "Master."

Nothing.

The Force is furled so tightly in the shroud of clouds that Obi-Wan has to bite back an irrational chill that he is the only one alive here, underneath the belly of this ship, with two corpses for company.

As lost as Qui-Gon appears, the spike of fear from his apprentice seems to reach him. The puff of a slowly released breath ruffles the top of Obi-Wan's head.

Obi-Wan meets his master's gentle gaze, and knows his own is filled with too much relief to hide.

"Obi-Wan." Qui-Gon's voice is not quite all _there;_ but his face seems to have lost a little of that blankness that had held it so captive in the past few days.

The younger Jedi inclines his head. "Master Qui-Gon."

They both glance once towards the rain-obscured archway, and once back towards the scent of flowers. Tahl rests, dark skin unmarred, fingers folded together over her stomach, the softest curl at the edge of her lips, as though at any moment she might break through her laughing dreams and wake.

"She was well-loved, Master." Obi-Wan looks unflinchingly at his mentor.

Qui-Gon takes a long moment to reply.

"Yes," he murmurs at last, as though admitting something he himself had long denied. "Yes, she was."

They raise their hoods as one. Qui-Gon runs a finger along one earthen brown tress before withdrawing his hand and activating the hover-bed's glass cover. Cool crystal slides over Tahl's features.

As they step out into the downpour, the deluge lessens into a silken pennant of silver rain. The wind quiets to a murmur, as though in respect.

The cloud-banks break on the horizon, allowing the watercolour shades of the setting sun to paint a bold stroke of golden orange above the cityscape. The grey landing platform washes ivory; muddy cloaks turn russet with the rich red of the sunset; Tahl seems to float on a tiny field of flowers on the convoluted metal surface of Coruscant, an oasis of colour.

Then Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon pass under the archway, and the sides of the Temple trickle rivulets of silver tears as it welcomes one of its daughters home for the last time.


	4. Mandalorian Rainstorm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [Time and Fallen Leaves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiKwuz85Ar4&list=PLBl_4bDlHEJt9FNRC4CTPAztbD0IaaKzf&index=4)

Rain comes rarely to Mandalore.

The planet's surface had once been as lush and fertile as Ragoon or Alderaan; but centuries upon centuries of war have done away with that. The few seas remain much the same, but the lands themselves have become nothing more than empty plains, filled with a dust so clear and pale that unknowing visitors might marvel at its fineness.

They would not if they knew what it was made of.

The evidence is all there, plain to see. Frescoes line each grand hall of the Sundari Palace, depicting the countless wars that pulverised stone into powder, carbonised trees and flowers, sucked up whole rivers and lakes, and ground almost every living thing into dry bones that over time wore themselves down into that very dust that covers the continents.

Mandalore is covered with the remains of its own dead.

There are offworlders there too, of course. Whole legions from every corner of the galaxy have perished here; stabbed, speared, shot, starved. But of them all, none number more than fallen Jedi.

So it is strange, then, that when Mandalore's first rare rainfall of the new year gathers on the edges of its atmosphere, a Mandalorian and a Jedi should be there to witness it, together.

The plain of dust and salt stretches from horizon to horizon in one unbroken circle, and offers no protection of any kind against the elements. There is simply no reference point to be seen in three hundred kilometres in any direction; the two cloaked shapes huddled back-to-back are the only aberrant forms in this formless arc of existence, two anomalies caught between the velvet night sky above and the colourless sand below.

Obi-Wan Kenobi draws the edges of his thin cloak closer around his neck with one hand, and uses the other to reach around to tug Satine Kryze's cowl lower around her blond curls. They cannot risk a fire in a place so awfully exposed as this, so there is nothing to keep out the chill of the desert night except their cloaks.

The duchess fares slightly better with her thick, wool-lined mantle, but Obi-Wan does not dare waste energy on warming himself with the Force. They have run too far and are much too exhausted for that. It has been a long day, and a long year. The only part of him currently anything other than half-frozen is his back, pressed against Satine's; they sit cross-legged in the wilderness, silent.

Thunder echoes across the sky, scattering stars in its wake. Clouds swarm upwards from the horizon, like grey flames licking the edges of a cooking pan.

Satine cranes back her head to watch the disappearing stars. Obi-Wan feels the movement; the heavy silk of her travelling-mantle brushes the back of his linen hood, the garb of royalty against servitude.

"Master Jinn has been gone for quite some time," she comments, as lightly as if they are taking tea in one of her receiving rooms in the palace, and not sitting with gnawing hunger in their stomachs, on a shapeless plain.

"Not to worry, my lady," Obi-Wan replies, mock-formally. "If he has met an inglorious end on a task as simple as scouting, rest assured that I would know."

Her laugh tremors as much through his back as in the air. "Such dark humour, Jedi Kenobi."

"I try, my lady."

A slow smile that he does not see, but flashes in the Force anyway. "Must you tease, Obi?"

"I'm afraid wit is the last enjoyment of the wretched, Satine."

A brief silence. Satine shifts again, and her cloaked shoulders dig slightly into Obi-Wan's shoulder blades, but he does not move. The discomfort does not bother him.

He feels her sigh.

"A year," she murmurs, into the rising wind.

Obi-Wan does not reply for a moment. He leans his head back, so Satine's hood fits snugly into the back of his neck, and his head rests on hers. He notes languidly that the clouds have covered the stars in their entirety, now. Lightning flickers through the clouds, like veins of lapis lazuli flashing through grey marble.

The air shivers, heavy with moisture. The rain is coming, and he should lower his head. But Obi-Wan does not.

"It's almost over," he says, as the first raindrop hits his cheek, just under his eye, and runs off down his cheekbone and towards his jaw, drawing a glistening track. Were he to weep, a tear would mark much the same track. "The war is burning itself out, and both sides are losing resources more quickly than they can replace them. If they sign this new ceasefire proposed by the Senate, Mandalore will at last have peace."

"Peace," Satine repeats. "Peace," she whispers again, as though saying the word will bring it upon the planet she so loves.

"Satine?"

"There is no peace at the end of a civil war, Ben," she whispers, slipping into the epithet she so rarely uses for Obi-Wan except in moments of exhausted defeat, when they are alone and both too tired to stumble through the syllables.

The rain falls more thickly now, slicking both their upturned faces with crystal droplets. Obi-Wan wonders if they should break apart, lower their heads, and allow the rain to slide off their hoods. But Satine does not shift, so neither does he.

Obi-Wan reaches back with one hand and finds Satine's fingers already there, angled perfectly to slip into his. Her hand is small and travel-roughened, so different to the manicured fingers he had first reached out to comfort, months ago. Now he has seen those hands grasp at stolen blasters, scrape against harsh branches, throw venom-mites at pursuing bounty hunters…

…those hands had fluttered in his palms as he lead them through sun and snow, rain and drought, fire and cold…

The dust turns to mud under their woven fingers, churned by the rain.

"Nearly all my people are dead," Satine says, nearly inaudible in the downpour. "Torn themselves to pieces." Her shiver flickers across Obi-Wan's shoulders.

"There are still some left." Obi-Wan counters gently. "Even if there were only a dozen citizens left, you would still be their duchess, and you would rule as one. Do not worry for your own station."

A soft laugh. "You mistake my meaning, Obi-Wan."

Startled, Obi-Wan twists in place to stare at her. Satine's blonde curls cling to her sharp-boned features like gold gilded to marble, but her eyes are as always much wiser than her youth, the blue of a summer day determined to never see rain.

"I worry not for my office." Satine smiles as she speaks, but it is forced. "I worry not for my people, even. We will endure, and Sundari will rebuild itself as the capital Mandalore should always have had. I worry over none of these things, my dear Obi-Wan."

The words reverberate in the unifying Force, echoing through the warp and weft of time to lawless war and a day undone.

Obi-Wan finds himself blinking away a film of tears, as though the Force whispers _Weep, weep, for you will not have time or luxury to do so then._

_Then? When?_

Satine watches him, and although she does not sense the Force as he does, she seems to see right though him.

But she still has not answered his unspoken question.

She shifts to face him fully, and he responds in kind. They sit cross-legged now, facing each other in an empty, horizonless world, where there is no sky or ground, only the rain and wind.

Satine takes both Obi-Wan's hands in hers before she speaks. "Have you wondered what would become of us after this?"

Obi-Wan tilts his head. Liquid crystal drips off the tip of his cowl. "After this rain? Well, my master shall come and find us, I suppose, and then we might–"

Satine's fingers constrict suddenly, painfully; Obi-Wan reflexively tightens his grip in return, until their clasped hands are white and bloodless and wet with the tears of the Mandalorian sky.

"No."

The duchess speaks so softly that Obi-Wan barely makes out the words in the relentless rain.

"No," Satine murmurs again, in a voice so low it seems to meld with the moaning of the gale. "I meant – after _this_. After…the war."

"I–" Obi-Wan swallows.

The answer is simple, of course. Duty calls them to their respective places; to a lifetime of servitude half a galaxy apart.

_Apart._

Obi-Wan finds his mouth completely dry, even though rain soaks through his cloak and plasters his tabards to his shoulders, destroying the sharp lines of his uniform like a rag doll disintegrates in a shallow pool.

Thunder rumbles overhead, juddering through their linked hands.

Both sides of the war will vote on the Senate ceasefire within the week. One week, and their hands might be light-years apart, their souls a hundred years dead to each other in real-time.

Obi-Wan realises with a shock that Satine's hands have never been more than a half-step away for the past year. A distance measured in the time of a heartbeat. And he has never needed to think about where she was; she has always been before, behind, beside him. A place only described as _there._

She is _there_ , and so is he.

He hunches over, suddenly unable to meet her eyes.

Her thumb moves over the back of his hand, and he knows she sees that he at last understands her dread.

Obi-Wan grasps at the Force, centers himself. When he raises his head, he is once more gentle humour and soothing calm. "I have heard people wonder a great many things during war," he begins. "But they are empty dreams, all. Let us not wonder at what is not yet decided, duchess. War could take it away at any moment."

Satine meets his gaze steadily. "But are we wondering the same thing?"

Obi-Wan smiles, and sky-water runs down his nose and drips off his chin. "Perhaps."

The clouds overhead waver, and the thinning of the grey curtain shivers in the Force. In a moment the rain will lessen, and in a minute the sky will clear. Soon they will be once more the only two figures on an endless plain, puppets visible to all who climb the horizon, silhouetted in the starlight.

So before the moment passes, and before his courage fails him, Obi-Wan leans forward and presses a kiss to Satine's fingers.

He straightens and meets her gaze, his darker azure to her cerulean.

He inclines his head. "I come to serve. I always will."

The rain clouds slip back over the horizon, and the stars retreat under the orange glow of the Mandalorian sun as it climbs over the edge of their world.

The Duchess and the Jedi sit motionless, hands clasped, as the rays of the sun catch the droplets on their cloaks and on their eyelashes, as though they are frozen statues edged with diamond.

Half a planet away, etched on the palace walls in Sundari, Mandalorian and Jedi wage their frozen war from hall to hall.

But here, under daybreak's fiery edge, a Mandalorian and a Jedi are clasping hands, and it is enough.


	5. Naboo Monsoon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [Awake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvBNoSjlKG0&list=PLBl_4bDlHEJt9FNRC4CTPAztbD0IaaKzf&index=5)

Silken clouds gather above the Gallo Mountains, weaving icy winds like coronets of translucent satin around the snowy peaks. The air currents seem to laugh in response as they pull the clouds across the sky in a waltzing line of velvet clouds and silver-lined lightning.

Naboo gathers the first monsoon storm into her arms as a gardener would gather flowers for harvest.

Obi-Wan watches the rain front move down over the foothills and across the countryside towards Theed, the shadow of the cloud bank sweeping over fields and vineyards like the wide-bristled brush of a lacquer painter, leaving the land sleek and dark and silent after it.

He waits, and does not move.

The cliffside falls away under him in an utter vertical drop to the rolling hills below, as though Obi-Wan stands on the edge of an emerald sea. The marble balustrade of one of the palace's smaller gardens is smooth and slippery under his boots, but he has no fear of falling. The Force had led him to the palace gardens that morning, with his fast unbroken and his tunics unchanged from the day before; the Force had murmured a polite refusal when a palace attendant asked him if he should like to retire inside, and the Force had not commented when he leapt up onto the railing to look down at Naboo's wild gardens.

It occurs to him that he has not quite leapt up to the centre of the railing; he stands just a pace to the side, having automatically left the space on his left for–

For _who?_ Master, teacher, mentor, guide; the luminous spirit that had once inhabited the gross matter Obi-Wan had fed to the flames, at dusk the previous day.

_You will be a Jedi, I promise…_

The last words he had spoken during the funeral, and he had not stopped to think, then, of their wisdom. Promising a child a future as a Jedi as one of the most skilled and revered members of the Order burned before them – is this what the promise of Knighthood should be? _You will be trained, and you will serve, and in all likelihood you will die a honourable death, and be committed to the flame of the Force._

There is nothing wrong with that path. It is one of servitude, willingly given; but in the short time that they have known each other there has always something in the child's face that makes Obi-Wan doubt if Anakin will ever truly understand it.

He glances up at the sudden gust of wind, and his cowl falls back over his shoulders, baring a head newly shorn of braid and nerftail. It is astonishing, really, how the head of a newly-knighted Jedi appears no different than the commonest of civilians.

The wind stirs as the rain front sweeps closer, flicks the edge of his cloak around his scuffed boots. The storm is almost upon him now. He does not have to wait much longer.

The palace rises up behind him in an impenetrable wall of yellow sandstone. Obi-Wan is caught between a breakwater and an oncoming storm swell, with an abyss before him and millennia of history behind.

He detaches Qui-Gon's lightsaber from his belt and activates it with a thumb slightly too slender for the crimson switch, holding the humming blade to the side with palms slightly too small to wrap securely around the rutted grooves, and fingers slightly too short to sense the true balance of the weapon. He will never be the giant of a man that was Qui-Gon, he knows; the hilt that he grasps will forever and always be for someone with more capable hands, and greater deeds.

He senses the oncoming impact, but he does not brace for it.

The wind slams into him first, like a wall of iron covered in wool, blasting him backwards off the balustrade. For a moment it is as though he floats on a horizontal torrent of ice, suspended above the grassy lawn; and then his shoulders carve into the turf in a painful streak of brown across green. He forces both his hands back over his shoulders, uses the rush of wind to flip himself into a handstand and tucks into a crouch, sword arm extended behind him.

Obi-Wan flicks Qui-Gon's lightsaber to the side just as the rain front reaches him.

The smooth snap of the blade turns into a discordant shriek as cool rain meets burning plasma, each raindrop vaporising in a tiny, emerald-lit hiss of agony.

The lightsaber is in pain, as though the crystal within it is screaming for release.

_Good._

The Jedi are the crystal of the Force.

Still crouched, Obi-Wan closes his eyes, digs his boot-tips into the newly-wetted mud, and _throws_ himself into the most advanced Ataru kata in existence, a dance so intricate and physically taxing that Qui-Gon himself had only performed it rarely, in moments of great need for self-challenge.

This qualifies as one such moment.

It is perfection in agony, all green and grey and ghostly ivory, a translucent maelstrom of pure balance. He does not feel the rending of the moisture-slicked lawn beneath his feet, or the sting of wayward leaves on his cheeks, or the absence of the familiar whip of long braid by his ear. In inexplicable irony, Obi-Wan wields this borrowed blade far better than he would his own. Each thunderclap from above is preceded by a flash of lightning that freezes the air with silver lines.

Silver lines, and he is the shatterpoint.

With this realization comes _grief_ , so heavy and overwhelming that he very nearly loses a limb to his own blade.

He skids to an inelegant halt, shaking arm extended, emerald blade shivering.

Obi-Wan opens his eyes, and finds the world dark and colourless indeed; the clouds have turned the sky opaque, and the rain is a torrent of grey steel that weighs on his sodden tabards and incarcerates him here, in this prison of his own denial.

His denial.

He stands, shivering, and raises blue eyes to a sky no longer the colour of his gaze.

_Qui-Gon is dead._

Obi-Wan pivots, crouches, and hurls himself back into the dance.

The wind shrieks in sympathy with Qui-Gon's lightsaber, and Obi-Wan's soul shrieks with it, guttural sobs tearing out of his heart and up his throat to shatter against the adamantine wall of his lips. He _will not_ make a sound. He brings his prison of green starlight closer to himself, tighter and tighter until–

The lightsaber brushes just a fingerbreadth closer to his arm than he should have, a slip in a shoto-shift so simple that an initate could have caught it, and halted the blade in time.

Unbalanced as he is, Obi-Wan doesn't.

He shouts in pain as the plasma sears a minor burn into his forearm. The shout turns into a scream, and the scream into a howl, obliterated in the thunderclap of the Naboo storm, and utterly, utterly alone.

_No._

Not alone.

The moisture on his cheeks is hot, now. The rain is frozen, and the sky lightless, but the Force-fed forge within him is ever warm and eternally bright, like the light of a hearthfire shining through windows, welcoming a traveller home.

Obi-Wan takes a breath of the damp air, readjusts his grip on Qui-Gon's lightsaber – _his_ lightsaber now – and begins the simplest of katas, one taught to him when he was too small to hold the shortest training 'saber, and had to use instead a wooden dowel, rubbed smooth by dozens of eager, tiny hands before him.

He steps and pivots and ducks and rolls, and flips gently when he remembers to, palms pressing into wet, living earth. He allows the rain and the gale to carry him, and the Force pours endlessly and breathtakingly bright into his form, warming him from his aching heart to his rain-slicked fingers. His tunics scatter drops of water as he spins in place, each dissolving into the river of the Force in starbursts of exquisite clarity.

Obi-Wan paints the silver canvas of rain with strokes of harlequin and ochre.

The rain falters, and gaps appear in the clouds above.

When Obi-Wan stills again, the rain has stopped. The afternoon sun breaks through the grey curtain of clouds, lining every blade of grass with radiance and splashing against the golden walls of the palace.

Standing in the newly-watered garden, Obi-Wan's tunics are ivory, his cloak is varnished oak, and his hair a rose-gold coronet. The marble balustrade gleams as though it has been polished, and over its shining edge the wild beauty of Naboo's gardens are silhouetted in incandescence.

Obi-Wan breathes in the cool, rain-freshened air, and the edges of his lips curve imperceptibly. Not quite a smile, but close enough.

He deactivates his lightsaber and returns it to his belt, before turning back towards the palace. He will have to speak to the palace cooks; there might be a few honey-rolls left over from lunch. Obi-Wan's hunger has made itself known, and he is suddenly ravenous for something sweet and filling.

Yes. There are sweet and filling things waiting for him, and the Force the most filling of all.

Obi-Wan is aware he is not fully recovered yet; there is still a space next to him that is unfamiliarly empty, but it will be filled soon enough by a chirpy, waist-high bundle of energy.

It is enough. More than enough. He will serve, and teach, and learn from the Force.

He has turned the screams of his lightsaber into a song.


	6. Alderaani Waterfall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [How the Tide Rushes In](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW2EbfvniiY&list=PLBl_4bDlHEJt9FNRC4CTPAztbD0IaaKzf&index=6)

Silver rain cascades in a second layer of silk over the Cloudshape Falls, but for the two dozen or so people gathered in the glass-walled chamber, the rain is no more than a silent curtain drawn over the panoramic transparisteel viewing windows. Councilors and governors alike look only at the haphazard piles of flimsy scattered over their desks, as speaker after speaker ascends the podium to address the chamber.

Alderaan is one week, two days, ten hours, and twenty-two minutes into a monster of a political debate, and Anakin is starting to lose what little impulse control he had scraped together at the beginning of the mission.

His lightsaber is a lead weight on his belt, those blasted inner tunics itch at his neck, his brand spanking new boots – his feet seem to be growing in pace with his height recently – are awkward and stiff at his ankles, and to top it all off, his padawan braid has somehow managed to slip itself down the back of his collar to irritate the skin between his shoulder blades. The rain drums endlessly into his skull in an agonisingly slow parody of the speakers' monotone voices.

Anakin's master, of course, suffers from no such indignifying fetters. But then again, in the half-decade Anakin has been a padawan, Obi-Wan has always somehow _transcended_ the mere annoyances of the common plebian. He stands now beside Anakin as a scion of the Jedi Order, all sculpted jawline and smooth beard and blue eyes that grow ever-wiser with time. Anakin, on the other hand, seems to only have gained a cracking voice and growing pains in place of wisdom.

Time to use his master's favourite exclamation of choice. _Blasted_ braid. Blasted boots. Blasted sleemo politicians.

Anakin shifts _delicately_ (or so he thinks, at least) and his wide red-brown sleeve brushes by his Master's cream tunics, the merest whisper of coarse cloth against its twin.

Beside him, Obi-Wan's Force signature swells slightly, from merely diplomatically interested to deeply amused.

Poodoo. Why are Jedi tunics so…flappy, anyway?

Anakin scowls – _minutely_ , thank you very much – and nearly jumps out of his skin when his master's voice darts out from beside him like a silver arrow into the chaotic murmur of the council floor.

_"_ _Councilors._ Might I have a moment? _"_ And there he goes again – Obi-Wan's voice rings so smoothly, it somehow washes the bitter atmosphere right out of the air.

With a start, Anakin realises the councilors' faces are now turned towards him and his master. He hurriedly straightens from his slouch. To his mortification, several of the older politicians smile indulgently, as though the movement evokes memories of precious grandchildren caught at inattention. Anakin resists the impulse to scowl again. with difficulty. He is _fourteen,_ for stars' sake. Not the nine-year-old who stumbled cluelessly into the Temple five years ago.

He becomes aware Obi-Wan is still speaking.

"–and so in light of this unwholesome atmosphere, might I propose an hour's recess? It should allow time to enjoy the wonderful weather." This is accompanied by an elegantly sarcastic lift of an eyebrow.

Distracted by the heat rising in his cheeks, Anakin seems to have missed the bulk of Obi-Wan's speech. This proposal, however, is well-welcomed by the assembly; there is a smattering of polite laughter at the Jedi's humour, and then a great rustle of rich cloth and chairs on carpet as the councilors stand while Bail Organa, Prince Consort, leads his wife Queen down from their dias and out of the room.

If Obi-Wan notices the grateful, almost invisible nods Queen Breha and the Prince give the two Jedi as they pass, he does not show it.

Anakin and Obi-Wan exit the chamber with identical deep bows, and it is with considerable relief that Anakin raises up his linen hood. Now he can scowl aplenty, and nobody will be able to–

"Padawan."

The word is so level and calm and wholly assuming and _un_ assuming at once that Anakin feels a sudden flare of inexplicable resentment.

_"_ _Master,"_ Anakin bites out. A moment later, he winces. If there was any confusion over how thinly strung Anakin has been in the last six hours, Obi-Wan certainly will not doubt it now.

Obi-Wan pauses in the act of raising his own hood and glances at him. A sigh, more exhaustion than anything else.

Anakin risks a brief meeting of gazes, and sees nothing but understanding in Obi-Wan's clear blue irises. For some reason or the other, this makes his own behaviour seem all the more worse. He drops his chin again and stares at his boots, which he had so carefully polished the previous day. Scuffed already. He must have squirmed in place without realising.

He waits, for Obi-Wan to tell him what to do. They might eat, or meditate, or train. Most likely the latter. Anakin's skittishness surely would suggest it.

A long moment of silence. The last council member passes by the pair, leaving the marbled corridor echoing and empty.

Then, unexpectedly: "What would you like to do, Anakin?"

Anakin's head comes up, faster than a Tatooine sand-shrew. "Master Obi-Wan?"

Obi-Wan's head is tilted, in that just-so, infuriatingly incomprehensible way of his. "What would _you_ like to do, Anakin?" he repeats, lightly and unaffectedly, as though this is the first time he has spoken.

Anakin opens his mouth, and closes it again.

Obi-Wan's lips edge upwards, ever so slightly. "If it helps your judgment any, we have an hour before council recommences. As for suitable activities, I shall refrain from any suggestions unless you wish to hear them."

Anakin's eyes stray from his master's patient gaze to the rain-slicked windows beyond.

The idea comes to him suddenly, mischievously, like a spring monsoon dancing on the horizon. _Maybe if…_ but no. Obi-Wan would never agree to it.

Nevertheless, Anakin gives voice to the idea before his courage fails him. "Could we…I mean, I _know_ we probably can't 'cause of the rain and we need to be presentable for the meeting and all but…can't we just…you know…" He falters at Obi-Wan's raised eyebrow. "Yeah. I know we can't. It was a stupid idea."

Silence, for a heavy, awful second. Anakin stares at the ground between his boots, toes curling under the tough leather.

"We could go into the rain if you like, Anakin."

Anakin's head snaps up to stare at his master. "What?"

Obi-Wan has already half-turned towards the corridor, but he pauses to glance backwards. "I _was_ correct in interpreting that mess of half-formed sentences to mean you would like to venture outside?" he inquires, politely.

"Uh." Anakin blinks, bewildered. "Yeah."

"Hmm." The _clack-clack_ of Obi-Wan's boot-heels on the marble floor reverberates down the corridor. "Again, not articulate in the least, but your meaning is nonetheless successfully communicated."

Anakin hurries to catch up, adolescent legs aching with the growing pains that have recently plagued him. "It's not that I'm confused or anything, Master, it's just that I didn't expect you to…uh…"

Obi-Wan does not reply. He nods politely as a doorman heaves open the massive doorway to the palace courtyard. The cascading rhythm of raindrops on the deserted flagstones fills the air with a ghostly, almost-human chatter.

Anakin flinches as his braid whips up to lash across his nose. A quick glance at Obi-Wan reveals that the older Jedi's shoulder-length hair has worked free of its neatly combed river, and is dancing merrily around his bearded chin.

But _that_ is not what so surprises Anakin.

Obi-Wan is _smiling._

Not the _I-am-standing-here-because-it-is-my-mission-to-protect-your-witless-brains_ smile he gives to simpering politicians, or the predatory _are-you-aware-you-are-perilously-close-to-losing-a-limb_ grin he sports when some unsuspecting character decides to take exception to the galactic law in his presence; not even the gentle upturning of the corners of his lips Anakin sometimes sees when Obi-Wan speaks of his younger days in the Temple.

Obi-Wan smiles, now, like the a child shown his first map of the stars; a wild sort of joy dances over his features as he watches leaves and twigs blown hither and thither by the wind.

Anakin knows that face well. It is the same expression he sees in the reflection of a droid's metal plates when he finally figures out what connection he had missed in its reprogramming; the face that smiles back at him on the curved windshield of a pod-racer or Jedi starfighter as he speeds through canyons and crevasses of stardust.

It is…a very un-Jedi-like expression. And, as a natural extension of that, a very _un-Obi-Wan_ expression.

Anakin is wondering whether he should say something about it when there is a swirl of rust-coloured cloak and cream tunics to his right, and Anakin's jaw drops down to his sternum as he watches his master step out into the rain without a care.

Obi-Wan has not even bothered to raise his hood; the raindrops soak through his russet locks at once, plastering it back from his face in a sleek pennant of earthy brown. The edge of his cloak flutters by his boot-heels, already heavy and dark with moisture.

Still wearing that strange smile, Obi-Wan pivots and heads towards a side exit, boots clicking on the flagstones. Anakin raises his hood and follows, nerf-hide leathers squelching with each step. How Obi-Wan manages to make his boots _clack_ so smartly is beyond him.

Out the side-gate, and onto a muddy path sodden with fallen leaves; the gale whips tunics into disarray, and plasters cream cloth with rivulets of bark and splintered twigs. Trees groan and dance on both sides, and rain falls ever down and about in a shower of silver and ice. There is a dull roar up ahead that suddenly crescendos upon the turning of a corner; the Cloudshape falls rise up, up and up towards the grey, storm-filled sky, the crash of water against stone deafening even in the cacophony of rain.

Obi-Wan follows the path onwards, unheeding of the stinging wetness of the spray, and slips behind the falls so quickly that for a moment Anakin nearly believes he has been taken by the whitewater. But a flicker in the Force says otherwise, and when Anakin edges after it, he finds himself in a hidden grotto, with grey, water-slicked walls glimmering, and the silver-white spray of the falls on one side.

Anakin sets to wringing out his sleeves as much as possible. Obi-Wan, he notices, simply stands in place, unmoving.

"Anakin."

Said padawan raises his head at Obi-Wan's voice. "Yeah?"

Anakin notes that the pointed lack of proper _Yes, Master_ does not seem to bother Obi-Wan in the slightest, stickler for rules as he usually is. Strange.

Obi-Wan faces the waterfall and reaches out a hand to feel the fine mist of its spray. His next words are nothing to do with their surroundings at all. "These past hours, in the meeting – were you listening to councilors' discussion?"

"Uh…" Anakin winces. He becomes suddenly aware of the sodden weight of his collar against his neck, the way his cloak sits heavily on his shoulders, soaked through.

A sigh, drawn out against the roar of water gushing against stone far below. "No matter," Obi-Wan murmurs, so quietly that Anakin barely hears him. Light filters through the white-satin-curtain of water, limning Obi-Wan's beard with crystalline droplets.

"Master?"

"Padawan."

Anakin straightens his spine involuntarily. That word is seldom used between them save for formal occasions. There must be some great lesson to be imparted for it to be spoken now, behind the dim coolness of a torrent of water. The Force draws tight around Obi-Wan, as if shielding him from an oncoming menace.

And then Obi-Wan shaking his head once, to himself, as if shaking himself awake; the Force swells and smoothens out in one airless sigh, and the tension is gone.

Anakin lets out his breath in one long hiss, carefully, silently.

"Padawan," Obi-Wan voices calmly, "What do you think of the current political schism in our galactic government?"

_Is there one?_ –would be the first reply that occurs to Anakin, but fortunately he swallows the foolish words before they can betray him. He decides to go with one of Obi-Wan's favourite negotiation moves. "Ah, the current political schis- _schism_ ," he parrots back, adding an inflection _just so_ to make the words not a repetition but a reflection of contemplative wisdom. _Ha!_

But Obi-Wan is watching him with _that_ dratted look, that blasted quirk of the lips and sliding of the eyes that says _I know exactly what you are thinking – or not thinking, padawan._

Anakin hurriedly sorts through his thoughts. "We've been sent on more diplomatic missions than usual recently," he begins, unsure. "And they seem to have, uh…dragged on…for longer."

"Good. You are quite right."

Anakin cannot quite hide his little start of surprise at that. "Master Obi-Wan?"

Obi-Wan tilts his head a little as he idly flicks drops of moisture off his fingers. "And why have these missions _dragged on_ , as you say?"

"The negotiations have taken longer to resolve? Or–" Anakin pauses here, struck by a thought so suddenly obvious he feels a rush of something akin to exhilaration. "They haven't resolved at all, have they? The negotiations, I mean."

His master turns to look at him, now, and Anakin sees an unreadable gleam in those sea-blue eyes; something that if it were anyone other that Obi-Wan, it would have seemed like a strange mix of recognition and pride. But then again, this is Obi-Wan. He has a strange way of asking questions that leave you somehow more sure of something than you were before; it is something that Anakin has come to appreciate, in rare moments where he is not frustrated by it.

Obi-Wan turns back to the waterfall and closes his eyes to the spray. "No, indeed. In many cases, we left them rather more heated than they began."

Anakin frowns. "But why?"

"There has been a growing division in the senate of late. The arguments that ensue in every inter-system or intra-planetary political sphere are simply a reflection of that larger divide." Obi-Wan pauses and steps back from the back-spray. Moisture drips off the edge of his sleeves.

"No, not that," Anakin presses. "Why did we leave them when our missions weren't finished?"

"Our missions were to ensure that no violence entered any of the proceedings. Our presence is needed in many systems; when I judged the negotiations could continue relatively peacefully, we moved on. We only need be concerned should the rift continue beyond the standard period of time such things occur."

"But in they're _still arguing_ ," Anakin retorts, hands forming fists within his wide sleeves. "Those planets and systems and moons we left, they're still fighting each other."

Obi-Wan squeezes water from one sleeve, and replies ineffectually, "Yes. In all probability they will for an indeterminate period of time, until something happens to tip the balance – a spokesman coming to the end of his elected service, or the death of an elderly councilor, or some such."

Anakin feels frustration rear hot and burning in his throat. "But that's winning because of weakness, not justice!"

"This is politics. I'm afraid that happens more often than not, padawan."

"But can't we–"

"Couldn't we what?" Obi-Wan says, not quite sharply.

"We're…we're _Jedi_ ," Anakin blurts, helplessly. And there, unspoken – _Jedi fight, Jedi die – but Jedi save worlds. I saw you and Master Qui-Gon save Naboo. He saved me from slavery, and he would have saved my mother from that life too if he could. What's a little argument to all that?_

There is a long, long silence.

Anakin realises he has taken a few steps forward, and Obi-Wan is watching him from a mere pace away, hands folded into voluminous robes, every inch the Jedi knight despite the rain-slicked wetness of his hair and the dripping edges of his tunic.

Obi-Wan's lips twitch, and he chuckles once, shoulders shaking.

"What?" Anakin asks, bewildered.

"You remind me of another fourteen-year-old boy I knew once, a little shorter than you. Much more naïve, and much less talented."

"Who? Do I know him?"

"I daresay you do," Obi-Wan says lightly. His eyes drift back to the silvery underside of the Cloudshape Falls, and that misty languidness enters his gaze again.

Anakin takes another step forward, until they are standing beside each other, facing the falls. Not quite as close as he would have a few years ago, perhaps, but then he is older now, and no longer the tiny nine-year-old padawan. "Master?" he asks, clearly.

"Yes, Anakin?"

"Why do you like the rain and water so much?"

Obi-Wan closes his eyes once, and breathes out, slowly; a mediation breath. "Because no matter the curses and insults thrown around the Galactic Senate Chamber, these falls run wild, and the rain makes the green things grow by the river."

Anakin tries, and fails, to understand. "So…?"

"Politics are draining on the weary, Anakin, but in all likelihood the Queen and Prince Consort's children and grandchildren will play under these falls, in much the same rain we walked through to get here."

Anakin wrinkles his nose in a very un-padawan-like way. "You sound like an old man."

Obi-Wan's sigh bears no censure. "I also like the rain, Anakin, because Master Qui-Gon did."

"Oh." _This,_ Anakin can understand.

Obi-Wan looks very much like he is suppressing yet another sigh. "Come," he says, after a moment. "We must return with time to spare for drying our cloaks."

"Yes, Master," Anakin says dutifully, as they slip out from behind the curtain of silver glass, onto a sunlit path still wet from rain that has already stopped.


	7. Kaminoan Deluge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [Get Off My Back](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ9aK5FYU_8&list=PLBl_4bDlHEJt9FNRC4CTPAztbD0IaaKzf&index=7)

Obi-Wan is somewhat convinced that the rain on Kamino never stops.

He had taken the precaucaution of conducting preliminary scans of the planet's geological composition with his shipboard computer upon his starfighter's descent through the atmosphere. As it turned out, the results were rather simple. Everything about the place is water, water, and more water; even the planet's water cycle mimics the magnitude of its seas.

With his luck, naturally, it is raining when he lands – on a horribly flimsy-looking landing platform sticking out like a durasteel Q-tip from the side of a dome-covered, stilt-legged building. Said Q-tip structure requires him to abandon the warmth and familiarity of his Jedi fighter and plow through fifteen metres of slippery, railing-less bridge.

His outer robes and cloak are useless against the deluge, of course.

But that his not the point. He is the closest thing to a _diplomat_ the Jedi have, and he will act like it, even in the face of…whatever this is.

So Obi-Wan smiles politely when the door-attendant greets him, showing not the slightest hint of surprise at the luminous eyes and undulating neck. He is _expected_ , apparently. He murmurs his thanks as he is presented with a towel of synthetic fibres – he spares a thought that if the government of this planet had thought to present guests with complimentary towels, they would perhaps be better off providing complimentary catwalk covers, as well – but he simply dries himself off as best he can and apologises for the puddle he has created in the spotless hallway. As it is, he barely has time to slick back his hair before he is presented, sodden, to the Prime Minister. _Lovely._

Obi-Wan arranges his robes and muses that this visit should prove to be very interesting.

Three hours later, as he throws open a transparisteel double door and barrels head-first into the downpour again, he reflects that the meaning of the word _interesting_ has so many different interpretations.

Jango Fett's distinctively Mandalorian helmet could be labeled interesting, for example, but inevitably, Obi-Wan's attention is drawn rather quickly to the twin WESTAR-34 blasters that clear Fett's hip holsters the moment Obi-Wan activates his lightsaber.

Red plasma bolts meet shrieking blue blade, sending steam hissing into air so cold that Obi-Wan's hands freeze onto his 'saber hilt. He advances through the onslaught with three smooth steps, and for a moment it almost seems too easy; but just as he uses the momentum of the last bolt to reverse the hilt in his grasp and send his white-blue 'saber lashing back towards Fett's shoulder, there is a whirring roar and the bounty hunter jerks out of reach as if snatched into the air.

Obi-Wan surveys the twin plumes of exhaust that blast out of the contraption on Fett's back with distaste. _Jetpack. How…uncivilised._ _Though perhaps I should have kn–_

He abandons the thought as he deactivates his 'saber and hurls himself sideways, feeling the diagonal bite of cold water down his back as he rolls out of the vertical barrage of crimson bolts. He comes out of the roll feeling thoroughly more sodden than before, but the discomfort flees from his mind when he catches a glimpse of his quarry clinging strangely to the side of the transmission tower, as though anchoring himself in order to–

_Oh, blast._

And _blasted_ Obi-Wan is indeed, off his feet and in a bedraggled mess of cloak and robes. In the brief moment before the back of his head makes solid contact with the much _more_ solid ground, two things register in Obi-Wan's mind: _One,_ jetpack missiles. Nasty little things. _Two,_ perhaps it is time for a change of hairstyle. Emulating Qui-Gon may be one of his chief aims as a full-fledged Knight, but getting whipped across his chin by his own sodden mullet is not one of those aims. Qui-Gon never seemed to care about his long mane of brown hair, but this is not something Obi-Wan would like to experience again.

_Thud._

The rain patters across his upturned face like a hundred tiny stinging needles.

Obi-Wan has just enough time to register that his lightsaber is no longer in his hand when there is a warning shriek in the Force, a scream echoed by starship's plasma cannons a moment later as they spit antifighter bolts toward his face. His lovely, bearded, very-not-protected-by-durasteel-and-energy-shield face.

He throws himself messily out of the way. The plasma sears the duracrete by his boots instead, carrying with it a wave of air so hot and dry that it vaporizes a swathe of rain in one hissing breath.

Jango Fett descends towards him, twin blasters raised.

Obi-Wan flings himself to his feet and decides that this is quite enough. Perhaps Fett expects him to reach for his lightsaber and call it into his hand; but that would be a mistake, because a blaster bolt would fly faster.

So he lets the Force pour into his blood and burn away the rain, and when his heart makes its next leap in his chest, he leaps with it.

His boot-heel meets Fett's sternum with a bone-shattering crack at the zenith of his jump. The landing jars his spine from skull to sacrum, but Obi-Wan glimpses a flash of silver as Fett fumbles the grip on one of his blasters.

Obi-Wan decides to take the Force-sent opportunity to kick the bounty hunter across the face, scrambling to his feet as–

–a pained grunt issues from behind the featureless visor, but Fett is sunk into a stance in the next moment and sending a gauntleted punch hooking around to Obi-Wan's jaw–

–which Obi-Wan blocks and returns with a punch of his own, only to receive bruised knuckles in return–

–And Jango Fett chuckles beneath his helmet before smashing his helmeted forehead into Obi-Wan's.

As Obi-Wan flies backwards, boneless like a Chandrillian leek given too long to soak in water, he wonders if his head is still connected to his spine. It certainly doesn't feel like it.

And then the back of his head smacks into the wet duracrete _again_ and he can confirm that yes, his skull is most certainly connected to his spine, which is connected to his aching arms and screaming legs. His body seems very determined to hold itself together.

_I'm getting too old for this._

He holds out his sword hand for his lightsaber.

A wire slices through the rain up and to the right of him and hooks around his outstretched wrist. He reaches up with the other hand to fling it away, but the counterweight on the end of the wire flicks up with a cheeky little twist and wraps around that wrist, too.

_Oh._

The now-familiar feeling of duracrete meeting his ribs is quickly replaced with the entirely new sensation of being dragged across said duracrete. Obi-Wan hears the clatter of his lightsaber but barely has time to care – he uses the Force to wrench himself bodily to the right instead, curling the wire around a pillar and pulling back on its length as hard as he can.

It is with no small degree of satisfaction that Obi-Wan watches Fett pull up short on his own wire, the jetpack gyrostabler overshooting the sudden vector change and sending the resultant thrust heading straight down. Fett crashes onto the edge of the landing platform, his jetpack smashing into the short railing and careening off to explode against the communications tower in a shockingly bright fireball.

Fett scrabbles for his fallen blaster on his hands and knees.

Sensing an end to this miserable fight, Obi-Wan sprints up to the stunned bounty hunter and triumphantly slams a boot into his chest, just dodging the red flare of the blaster shot. So focused is his hit that Fett practically flies off the platform edge, trailing wire behind him.

In the sudden moment of silence, Obi-Wan stares at the wire still wrapped around both his wrists.

"Oh, not good," he murmurs.

He doesn't have the energy to even shout as he is yanked off the platform and onto the slanted surface of one of the Kaminoans' many domed roofs. Obi-Wan catches a glimpse of Fett's gauntlet sparking as it digs into the reinforced alloy before he slides right off the rain-slick edge and into open air.

Obi-Wan cries out as the wire tightens painfully around his wrists and he jerks to a stop. He sways gently in the wind, under the massive shadow of a dome and out into the rain again, from damp, silvery moonlight into dry, dark shadow; back and forth like a hanging toy, caught in the half-light of a giant playhouse filled with thousands upon thousands of toy soldiers. The sea below is a roiling pit of white-headed waves and roaring breakers.

And then suddenly the pressure around his wrists is gone, and gravity swallows him whole again.

There, falling, with the wind in his cloak and the rain in his eyes, Obi-Wan feels his heart slow, and his breathing calm.

Falling alone, he can handle.

He unwraps the wire around his wrists, reverses his grip, and throws out the counterweight like a fishing line, silvery and silken in the stormy curtain. It loops languidly around the support strut of a catwalk. The arrest of his momentum is as jarring as before, but his hold is secure, and his aching wrists steady.

Suspended on a plane of nothing, Obi-Wan glances up at the storm and feels the wind caress his cheek, guiding his head towards the catwalk slightly ahead and below him.

He squints at it and judges the distance. He swings a bit, gathering momentum, changes his mind at the last minute on instinct and swings once more, and then flips into a somersault to land on the mercifully dry catwalk at a run.

One harried turbolift ride later, Obi-Wan dashes out into the deluge, brings his lightsaber into his hand with a flick of the Force, and hurls a tracker onto the hull of the rising starship.

He deactivates his 'saber and watches the ship's yellow repulsor lights fade into the grey wall of rain.

The same rain patters down on his tangled hair, runs unhindered down the back of his tunics, and turns the soft standard-issue stockings inside his boots into bantha-milk.

Obi-Wan raises a half-hearted hand to tug at his hood, but abandons the movement when the material proves too wet to even unstick from his back.

"Lovely weather we're having," he mutters to himself, before turning and stomping back into the white corridors.

Kaminoans and clones alike stare at him curiously as he stalks past. An hour previous he had stood on a balcony above legions of clones, one crisply hooded figure over a hundred thousand white-armoured brothers. The stamp of armoured feet on the hangar floor, the snap of weapons at parade ready, the identical cry of _sir, yes, sir!_ – and Obi-Wan Kenobi, overlooking an army for the Jedi to command.

Obi-Wan wonders if the world has gone mad, like the storm that rages outside these pristine, false walls.

But no. For now, he has a mission. He has a council to comm, a blasted towel to find, and Anakin to worry about. Not necessarily in that order.

And, as it does not seem as though the rain will stop until the end of the Republic, eons from now, he should perhaps enquire as to a way to return to his Jedi starfighter relatively dry.


	8. Landing at Point Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [History Has Its Eyes On You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyolq20wfVs&list=PLBl_4bDlHEJt9FNRC4CTPAztbD0IaaKzf&index=8)

Even after it all, Obi-Wan would never admit the landing at Point Rain nearly cost him his sanity.

It does not rain on Geonosis. It did not the first time he had been there, and it does not now. The acrid land of the rocky planet is porus for naught but bugs.

But here at Point Rain, it rains antifighter bolts instead.

The gunship streaks through the lashing streams of plasma, rocked on air currents supercharged with ozone. Obi-Wan feels the maelstrom shudder through the thin LAAT/i walls, trembling in the reedy support strap he grasps in one hand. The mechanical shrieks of downed gunships and the desperate rattle of repulsors sends tremors echoing down from arm down to booted feet until he becomes a part of the tempest itself, one helpless passenger trapped in a fragile coracle thrown hither-thither by the firestorm.

Around him his squadron sway and stumble with the shudder of the ship, yellow-painted bucket-heads twisting this way and that, all anchored to the ceiling by one hand as Obi-Wan is, in pantomime puppetry.

_ "General Kenobi, don't land! The zone is hot!" _ The background static in the comms is not enough to mask the urgency of the transmitted voice.

_ "But there's nowhere else to go!" _ Obi-Wan shouts into his wrist comlink before flinging out his hand again to balance himself, blinking as sparking plasma and metal shears through the air beside the gunship.

And then it isn't just _beside_ them anymore.

Obi-Wan sees the flare of the plasma bolt in the Force a heartbeat before it hits, as a ship's night-shift lookout would sense a sudden freak wave racing out of the darkness ahead; that one frozen instant when he knows that there is nothing he can do to stop the impact, because a single desperate heartbeat is not long enough for him to open his mouth to shout a warning, or for the pilots to hear and react.

The bolt slashes into the gunship's port wing like a dull surgical knife digging gracelessly into thick skin. Obi-Wan is so deeply embedded in the Force that he feels the wound as though it were in his own left arm; it takes an effort greater than expected to raise his comlink to his lips and shout a report to Anakin and Ki-Adi-Mundi. It would appear Obi-Wan and his select squad from the 212th will not be arriving earlier than the 501st and Master Mundi's company at their planned rendezvous.

By the time Obi-Wan lowers his arm, he knows he has only moments left; the Force is shrieking louder in his head than the gunship's wailing alarms. Mentally reaching out, he wraps his awareness around the forms of his men, each a similar but still completely unique flame in the Living Force, holding them close like the child soldiers they truly are.

He doesn't know if they even hear his last shouted order to brace themselves; the gunship screams in an agony of contorted metal as it smashes into the rocky ground.

Obi-Wan screams with it in a silent inward howl, heart bleeding as twelve of those Force-lit flames are abruptly extinguished in a waterfall of icy death. He waits for the torrent to flood over him, too, to pull him under and hammer his bones into a caldera of melted durasteel…

…but it does not. Death breaks around Obi-Wan like rainwater in storm gully flowing around a support beam, and he is surrounded, but not drowned. It seems a common theme in his life, this. To be enclosed with death on all sides, but with his head just above it all, gasping, always seeming to be on the last dregs of sanity but hovering there, still alive.

All this, and it never occurs to him that he could simply stop treading water.

A breaker rushes towards him out of the sea of the Force, and he is dashed into emptiness.

(:~:)

An indeterminate period later, he wakes to complete darkness.

His face is streaked with rainwater, oily and disgusting. Obi-Wan blinks slowly, wondering how in the stars he could have lost his way in the lower levels of Coruscant during a scheduled rainstorm. Surely only rain in Coruscant's necropolis could be so utterly filthy.

He breathes in, and smells burnt…something. Not metal. Something…organic.

Obi-Wan becomes aware that the liquid on his face cannot possibly be water. It is too thick, too rapidly congealing.

With returning memory comes revulsion; he clamps his lips shut.

Stars above, that is not rainwater. That is engine oil. And blood.

And he is breathing the dusty air of Geonosis, not the filtered exhaust of Corsucant. The dust under his skin is too fine for Tatooine and too coarse for Mandalore.

Obi-Wan becomes aware of a wrist clamped between his fingers. There is someone resting there, barely conscious, just to his left, the only flickering point of life in this burnt darkness. The only other member of his landing party to survive. He searches dimly through the Force. _Trapper_ , his frazzled mind supplies.

It occurs to him that if someone was to run the blood spattered on his face through an analyser, one could reasonably conclude two people had been in the crash. All the clones have the same genetic code; Obi-Wan might be covered in the life-liquid of a dozen of his best men, but only he truly understands the enormity of it.

He closes his eyes and hears, dimly, the thunder of anti-aircraft lasers and the patter of debris against the ochre rocks beyond, the too-bright rainfall of death and war.

He discovers he is having trouble breathing, and suppresses a chuckle. It would seem he is drowning in this downpour after all.

So Obi-Wan floats, only half-aware, until Waxer and Boil tear open the side of the downed gunship, helping him and Trapper out into a hurricane of fire and across no-man's-land to the rendezvous zone – but even then, he is all gentle wit and good humour. He retains this quiet determination even as the hurricane of blaster bolts pick up speed and buffets his men from all sides; even when he sees that the storm surge has finally come, and that he must take up his lightsaber in hand as a last torch before its inevitable extinguishing–

But suddenly a new gale rises from the west, and Obi-Wan cannot quite stop the expression of disbelief that sweeps over his brow.

Reinforcements.

_ Anakin. _

He slides down besides the pile of supply crates, too exhausted and relieved to speak.

It is only after his grandpadawan and former padawan reach his side that Obi-Wan realises that the hot, fiery rain has finally stopped.

He offers a wan smile and sarcasm, but he leans on Anakin's shoulder gratefully when it is proffered.

Much later, in the cramped darkness of his private cabin, with the hum of a star destroyer's hyperdrive underneath his bare feet, he washes his scraped face of the blood of a dozen men, and his hands of his own. In the report forwarded to the Senate two hours, eleven minutes, and three seconds after _that_ , he is succinct, and emotionless, and efficient.

Obi-Wan does not speak of Point Rain again.


	9. Storm of the Decade, Tatooine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: [Sound the Bugle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZIF6XnlRGI&list=PLBl_4bDlHEJt9FNRC4CTPAztbD0IaaKzf&index=9)

Obi-Wan is ten years into exile when the scorched fissures in his mind finally deepen beyond all endurance.

He wakes in the bone-chilling dry air of a desert dawn, as he has every morning for a decade now. He wraps his worn tunic about ever-thinning shoulders, and scrapes the back of his grimy hand against cracked lips. And they are _always_ cracked; some days, it hurts to speak. But he has grown used to tasting blood each time he opens his mouth, now. It seems to be as integral a part of Tatooine as the sand that scars his eyes and dulls his lightsaber hilt.

And as Obi-Wan does every day before early meditation, he pours himself his morning ration of warm, tepid, vaporator-generated water. Today he feels as though he should like to indulge, so he takes a tiny packet from a handmade tin, and scatters a tiny pinch of dusty leaves over the surface of the water.

The tea tastes at best like a cheap mimicry of the Sapir he remembers with such fondness from the tranquility of his youth; just as he in his grime-stained robes and torn cloak is but a broken shadow of what was once an Order ten-thousand strong.

Obi-Wan savours it anyway.

He meditates soon after, with the taste of desert dust on his tongue, mixed with the medicinal tang of tea grown on a far-away star system, where there is light and flowers and _rain._

The thought opens his eyes without him willing it to.

Qui-Gon does not seem to want to chat today.

The twin suns have truly risen by now. Already, the temperature within his tiny hovel is beginning to rise as the suns greedily suck up what little moisture there is in the air. Gluttons, the pair of them are; when there is not a trace of water left, they move on to living things, draining sweat and tears and saliva until all that remains are husks of half-life.

Obi-Wan wills himself to rise on swollen feet and forces them into his boots. Good old Jedi quartermaster work, those boots. Two Outer Rim sieges, molten rock and lava, and ten years on sand too dry and harsh for metal, and still they protect his feet as well as ever.

He scatters nutrient-mix into another precious cup of water and watches the mixture condense into something resembling bread. It tastes exactly like a mouthful of rock, but he swallows it anyway. It is more than what a half-million slaves scattered across the planet have.

Beyond the open doorway, the sand-sea shifts with currents of liquid air. Of course, it is nothing more than heat-haze; there is no breeze. The sky is a brilliant, unbroken arch of blue, almost a solid dome trapping him here to roast alive.

Amusing, that thought.

Obi-Wan raises his hood over his greying hair, and steps into the desert.

He wanders across the dunes, letting the Force take him where it will. He walks without direction or care, until his feet ache in the heat and his eyelids swell against the glare.

He walks until he finds the wind.

The sands shift in hissing sheets of gold over the crests and troughs of the Dune Sea; beautiful and wild and endless. Obi-Wan _knows_ that it is beautiful, as he had thought the first time he saw this empty, still sea, but over time the borderless sands had lost their glitter.

He closes his eyes and lowers his hood to feel the wind on his cheeks, at least–

–and the wind disappears.

Obi-Wan opens his eyes to stare up at the defiant suns, and cares not that they scorch his cheekbones and claw precious moisture from the corners of his eyes. Something rises through the half-filled cavern that is his stomach to choke in his raw-backed throat.

Even the wind has betrayed him.

His knees impact the sand before he is aware of it. The grit burns his palms, and his fingers curl deeper into the crystalline not-liquid of the dune-top. The backs of his hands are red, red with heat and parched of water. His heartbeat judders on slowly, agonisingly, refusing to halt, pumping those precious four or so standard litres of lifeblood around a failing body clothed in pauper's finery.

Obi-Wan curls his fingers into fists and pulls them towards his bowed head in a full kowtow, pressing his forehead into his thumbs in a silent scream of _I am a Jedi._

His lips are salty with sweat and metallic with blood when he opens them and releases a barest whisper.

_"_ _Please."_

And the first raindrop hits the back of his head.

The drop is followed by another. And another.

And then the sky splits open with a crash of thunder, and water cascades upon him as though the heavens weep for joy.

Obi-Wan lifts his forehead off his hands and feels the rain wash away his tears.

His first thought is, strangely, that the Lars homestead would be out of business for at least a month.

The Force shimmers around him, as though saying laughingly, _You were heard, dear child._

In response, the deluge roars into a sheer torrent, slamming into the sand-sea in perfect tiny impacts of silver needles on hungry dunes. Obi-Wan tears off his cloak with shaking fingers and is instantly soaked through, wonderful chilled moisture running down his coarsened beard and through his tattered tunics, limning his lightsaber with silver and his palms with liquid crystal.

He rips his boots and stockings off and throws them down beside his abandoned cloak; the first step of his bare feet onto rain-sodden sand is a relief so pure and unimaginable that he nearly weeps again.

A memory rises from the locked-away depths of his mind, of tiny feet pattering on the muddy banks in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, of orange webbed fingers in one of his hands and a human one in the other, three young shouts rising into the air as they dive into the cool current of the river.

Mischief, joy, and glorious childhood.

Obi-Wan is alone here, but he shouts anyway, throwing himself into the downpour. It is a shout that has been kept within him for ten long years; the howling remnant of _You were my brother,_ the raw unending syllable at the end of _I loved you._

He wonders if he looks like a madman; mad Ben Kenobi, wizard of the shifting sands.

The song of the rain sings with his leaps and chuckles as he stumbles, but the wind is a buoyant arm around his shoulders when he does. He cries and laughs and sings and dances, kata unpracticed for so many years that he can finally afford to do so now, flinging droplets in wheeling arcs.

His lightsaber glows a brilliantly clean blue, its crystal bursting into as clean a flame as the day he found it on Ilum. For a moment the sand dunes are mud under his boots, and this rainstorm a Naboo monsoon, and the grief within him for a master and not a brother; but then the dance quickens and the grief is gone, wrenched clean out of him like a plaster pulled off with expert speed.

The wastes are as empty as Mandalore, but the rain is the same silver curtain. The rumble of thunder and the crash of the gale mimics the deep-throated roar of an Alderaanian waterfall.

Obi-Wan closes his eyes and throws down his shields, letting the Living Force breathe life into his weary bones. He nearly forgets that he does not have a padawan braid.

Eventually he makes his way back to his abandoned outer clothing, scoops it up, and runs back the way he came, his heart thrumming in his ears like a Criffian hummingbird, winged with painted feathers. The Force shines like a homing beacon as he sprints blindly through the downpour, calling him home. He soon makes such good speed that he nearly outstrips the storm itself; Obi-Wan glances upwards and finds that he is at the head of a massive bank of roiling clouds, leading the storm across the wastes as rank upon rank of squalling rainclouds follow.

He dashes into his hut and drags out every basin, bottle, and water receptacle he owns. When that is done, he falls to his knees, and drinks the sky's gift. It is sweeter than the purest Corellian wine.

His hands scrub through his hair and his arms and legs, until for the first time in years, he is clean.

The rain does not stop until the last of the many bowls and basins are filled and overflowing. The domed roof of the hut behind him shimmers newly white in the new light; the air is heavy with remaining moisture, and everything from the desert rocks to the vaporator spire is scrubbed clean.

Obi-Wan stands and tilts his head upwards. Droplets drip off his fingertips.

The sky is painted with vibrant carmine and gold, like the day Obi-Wan and his master brought _her_ home to the Temple.

Obi-Wan closes his eyes and bends at the waist. "Thank you," he murmurs, "for the gift."

The Force caresses his cheek, and whispers, _Patience._

Tatooine sighs and releases its hold on the Storm of the Decade.

Across the wastes, a young boy clambers back inside, wondering if the thrum of the storm within his fingers was something he imagined.


	10. Epilogue: The Rain Curtain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The grey-rain curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise." - JRR Tolkien, _The Return of the King_
> 
> Music for this chapter: [Testify](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDcYsyx2mCg&list=PLBl_4bDlHEJt9FNRC4CTPAztbD0IaaKzf&index=10)

Obi-Wan Kenobi had always thought that death would come like an inescapable storm.

Death is never sudden, for a Jedi; death always comes after a moment of awareness, where the Jedi knows it is coming, and hears the Force singing them home. The first storm swell had drowned almost all ten thousand of the Order; for the few who survived, there had been worse fates; crimson lightning, explosive thunder.

Obi-Wan senses _his_ storm stir in the Force the moment he hears the harsh, mechanical breaths of the thing that was once his brother. He pauses, grasping his scarred lightsaber, and watches the thunder rumble in the Force–

–And he realises he has always been wrong.

The storm trembles in the oncoming wind, and subsides to a gentle swell of rain, a curtain of glorious spun gold rushing towards him from over the horizon.

It hovers there, just at arm's length, cascading in kyber-clear crystals over the black casket of Vader's armour, suffusing the air with a glimmer so bright it swells over the grimy red glow of Sith lightsaber. The patter of raindrops echoes with a promise he has heard every day of his life from the time he first reached out and touched the light; a promise of an eternal home, of a place untouched by thirst, or hunger, or shadow.

Beautiful, beautiful water.

The Force surges for a last time, and breaks gently over his boot-tips like the edge of an oncoming tide, leaving his path smooth and clear before him.

Perhaps he hesitates for a moment longer than he should have; but he would like to look past those bulbous red eyes and frozen, snarling mouth and see a shadow of the brother he raised. And there, just at the corner of his vision, Luke; those features so achingly similar, a blurred reflection of the man who had once stood beside him, and now towers before him, changed.

So for the last time, Obi-Wan raises his lightsaber in the ancient salute of the Jedi guardian; he stands like one of those solemn bronzium statues that line the processional way to the Temple, all those years and star-systems away, and smiles. Obi-Wan is almost amused at how the expression seems to shock Vader more than anything else he could have done...

And he steps into the rain.

Instantly, the aches of age and exile are washed from him. He feels the light of the Force more closely and cleanly than ever before; he is a crystal cut flawlessly from once-rough ore, sharp and perfect and a conduit so pure that the light pours in and out and around him as though he were created simply to bask in its warmth for eternity.

Obi-Wan opens his eyes – he is not quite sure when he had closed them – and finds that he is not quite alone.

"I have been waiting long, young one," Qui-Gon says, quite calmly. His long mane of earthen hair ripples in the gentle wind, around the edges of a small smile.

This world is a torrent of light; rain so fine and golden that the very air seems to laugh. Qui-Gon shines in bright, shadowless luminance, young and old and ageless all at once.

Obi-Wan stands for a moment, simply looking at the man before him. He opens his mouth and closes it again. Belatedly, he tries to bow, and is instead caught around the shoulders before he can complete the motion.

"You utter idiot," Qui-Gon says fondly, before pulling him quite firmly into a hug.

If Obi-Wan notices that his own hands seem smoother than they have been in a long time, and that there is a tickle of a padawan braid over his ear as he is smushed into coarse tabards, he does not pause to wonder at it.

The pitter-patter of rain is all around them, constant and soothing; but they are untouched by damp or cold.

"Mas-da," he mumbles into Qui-Gon's shoulder.

"Obi-Wan," the voice above his head says mildly, "I rather think you should address me by my name, considering you made Council and I did not."

And therein rests _memory._

"Qui-Gon," Obi-Wan says, more clearly this time, _"I tried."_

A sigh, and then he is pushed to arms' length, though one broad hand still rests on his shoulder. Obi-Wan looks up, expectant.

"You did," Qui-Gon states, firmly. "And you succeeded. Or _will_ succeed. It is the same thing, after all."

Obi-Wan blinks. "But I–"

"Obi-Wan. I am very proud of you."

The words settle into his heart like a warm bowl of tea; a sweet, secure weight in his core. He finds himself suddenly taller, with the steady hands and feet of masterhood, as he had in the early days of the Clone Wars.

Qui-Gon's eyebrows rise teasingly. "It's verging on the ridiculous that you didn't know, actually. I had an awful habit of boasting about you behind your back."

"I know," Obi-Wan chuckles, rubbing at his eyes – they are quite dry, but he feels as though they aren't – "You were never quite subtle about it."

"Subtlety would be _your_ forté, my friend."

"And _un_ -subtlety, yours."

"Speaking of unsubtlety," Qui-Gon says suddenly, "You should perhaps tell our young friend that one blaster against four stormtroopers is pushing it, even for a Skywalker."

Obi-Wan pivots, stares for a moment at the scene unfolding behind the rain curtain. Time seems to run slower on the Jedi's side; a scant few seconds have passed in the world of the living.

It _does_ seem like a warning is in order. Blasted Skywalker brains.

"Run, Luke, _run!"_ he shouts, instinctively pitching his voice to the aged timbre it acquired in the last years of his exile. Fortunately, _this_ Skywalker seems to listen to him better than the previous one ever did; Obi-Wan's order echoes through the curtain, and is followed without question.

"There," Qui-Gon chuckles. "I should think your work completed."

The golden shower tumbles all around them. Obi-Wan extends a hand into the cascade and wills it to touch him; he lets the warm droplets trickle over his fingers.

"Where do I go now?" he inquires, matter-of-fact.

"I have a pot of tea waiting," Qui-Gon says, folding his wide sleeves together. "Tahl is minding the fire, and Mace – if he hasn't run off – is setting the table. There are others there, waiting."

Obi-Wan finds himself unable to speak, overwhelmed. Eventually, he manages to loosen his tongue enough for a croak. "Noorian blossom Sapir?" he whispers.

"Of course."

"Qui-Gon."

"Yes?" The elder Jedi responds.

Obi-Wan stares at him, and repeats, softer, "Qui-Gon."

The crowsfeet at the corners of Qui-Gon's eyes deepen. "Obi-Wan," he says, simply.

The Force is there. The Force is _always_ there.

The rain falls forever warm and golden as they turn away from the rain curtain, and make their way home.

(:~:)

**FINIS**

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I've always loved the quiet victory of Obi-Wan's life and how it rang true with my own beliefs, and this is a tribute to the beauty of his story and his character. It remains one of my favourite fics that I have ever written.
> 
> And as always, thanks for the comments and kudos!
> 
> For more Obi-Wan, check out [The Silent Song](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27522955/chapters/67306648) or my other fics on my [AO3 profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EirianErisdar) or [FFN profile](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/3455012/Eirian-Erisdar).


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